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alt title(s): Stop Having Fun Guy; Stop Having Fun 
Why are all the interesting stages red?
No, you can't play with it, you won't enjoy it on as many levels as I do. —Professor Frink, The Simpsons, "The PTA Disbands"
I agree that scrub mentality can be very annoying. But the competitive mentality isn't blameless, and has its share of jerks as well. — Falcon Pain, this Trope's Discussion page
The gamer equivalent of the Arrogant Kung Fu Guy. He's a Hard Core gamer, plays in all tournaments, and knows everything about how to play. He knows all the secret moves (even the glitches), the most effective strategies, and the quickest ways to completely destroy his opponent. He's completely “above” the mantra of casual play: He doesn't play just for fun, he plays to win. He's good, and he knows it; he can just be a douche about it.
This kind of player is good, and there's nothing wrong with that. But he is also extremely arrogant. He's completely intolerant of play styles other than his own. If you challenge his beliefs, he'll automatically call you a Noob, a Scrub, or something similar. Anyone who doesn't play like him instantly simply doesn't know as much as he. You'll always see this kind of player arguing that the debated Game Breaker is completely and utterly legitimate. After all, it's not about playing, it's about winning, right? Much like the Scrub, the player probably won't be listening to logic or facts. It's either agree or be wrong. Expect this to cause a big annoying (but sometimes amusing) Pro- Scrub Flame War.
Yep, that's right, he's the opposite of the Scrub. But just as annoying.
This kind of player takes the "pro" mentality to an annoying extreme (generally giving other tournament players a bad name), while the Scrub takes the casual mentality to an annoying extreme (generally giving other casual players a bad name.) In the real world, there's room for both, and game companies generally try to put something in their games for both sides; see Player Archetypes for details.
To supplement something on the Scrub page: What ultimately makes the Stop Having Fun Guy undesirable isn't the rulesetting; it is the attitude. What distinguishes the Stop Having Fun Guy from a regular competitive/tournament player who simply likes playing to win is that the Stop Having Fun Guy believes that his way is the only proper way to play the game.
Is a specific subspecies of Fan Haters, who dislike/condescend "casual" gamers who don't play the same way they do. Also mixes with Complacent Gaming Syndrome where the players use only one or two characters/strategies/levels to make winning easier.
See also: Scrub, Serious Business, Fan Dumb, and especially Munchkins, who are the larval form of this. See Its Easy So It Sucks for the mentality that sometimes results from the single-player form of this.
Keep personal tales to Troper Tales, and remember this isn't about a person prefering/only using a particular or rigid playstyle. It's about when they criticize others for using a different style than theirs. Tropes that are often wrongly labelled as this are Rules Lawyer, Complacent Gaming Syndrome, Challenge Gamer, or Munchkin.
Examples:
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Meta
- Despite its points about having fun by playing this way, and although the book later advocates
 mixing it up a bit and playing for fun too, fun by playing to win; the way it describes scrubs actually puts the Stop Having Fun Guys man in the same category-by creating arbitrary and confining rules on gameplay. Admittedly the Stop Having Fun Guy knows all the words and doesn't have to resort to calling every tactic cheap to get his whiny, petulant point across, but he's still a scrub according to the article.
- How David Beats Goliath is a New Yorker article about this trope. It talks about a girls' basketball team reaching the National Junior Basketball Championships due a new technique that wore down both teams' stamina much faster - and their team had worked almost solely on building stamina. The girls were then castigated by the other teams for playing 'unfairly' and not letting the teams 'develop basketball skills'. The team lost its final game by caving to pressure and playing the 'proper' way after a ref called excessive amounts of fouls. So in short, Stop Having Fun Guys can easily turn into Scrubs when the "wrong" method beats them.
- It should be noted as well that the national game was played on their opponent's court (presumably with overwhelming home team support), and the referee in question was supplied by the home team.
- In this Penny Arcade two-parter, Gabe and Tycho devolve in Stop Having Fun Guys over Blaz Blue.
- The first half of a sports manga by the name of 'Fight No Akatsuki' is about one kid's fight to get to play on his school's basketball team, which is full of Stop Having Fun Guys, because he doesn't take basketball as seriously as everyone else does.
- If you draw art for fun, even if you decide to develop as an artist or draw your own style (Which takes far more skill than copying something you saw in real life to the tee), then the pretentious artist crowds will find you the scum of the earth. God forbid you ever draw something that even resembles something that isn't ultra-realistic or bland and emotionless. If the council of Pretentious Waffle Defense catches you committing the crime of drawing manga or anything that resembles it in the least bit (This includes basing it more off the artstyle of Silver-age comic books), then you must vow to burn all your art and never ever ever pick up a single piece of art supplies at all. Trying to draw your own style to stand out amongst the zillions of anime-clones, ultra-realistic, and emotionless "dark" art is an unforgivable sin and you will never develop as an artist since you are automatically shit for not conforming and drawing realistic or abstract art. Immelmann had drawn a comic that captures the majority of artists of these types and hits it right on the dot.
- That's the Internet environment. In the real "art world" of critics and collectors, the environment for the past 20-30 years has been focused almost entirely on movements like Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism, so if you paint things that are realistic or figurative you're relying too much on technique and can't possibly be a real artist. Thankfully there are signs that this is finally shifting back the other way.
- To be fair, a common thread in art criticism is the notion that a learning artist must first be able to draw something perfectly realistic, then you can branch out to your own style, so that your artstyle probably comes from choice rather than being imposed by limited talent.
- Expect to receive grief for even lagging in online video games. How dare you not pay for the most expensive internet connection, even if it isn't available where you live, and how dare you be using a wireless network that's prone to going on the fritz or randomly burping? There is no excuse for not having the best internet out there it seems!
- In some games, apparently this applies even if the lag is server-side instead of player-side. Server is overloaded? Player's fault. Someone's giving the server a Denial of Service? Player's fault. The server explodes in a fireball visible from space? The player's fault! Mercifully, this is the exception and not the rule.
- Of course, most (online played) games nowadays have servers both for dialup users (~150ms, also great when your computer is slow) and broadbanders (~5ms). Both playing on one server leads to frustration on both sides, separated, everyone enjoys the game. As long as there are no cheaters and idiots, of course.
- And if you don't know anything about port forwarding...
- On a non-gaming note, the so-called "War On Christmas" seems to be more about complaining that people don't celebrate Christmas and the accompanying holidays the way you want them to.
- On You Tube, there has been many of a Flame War over how people compose songs in Mario Paint. There are two version: one that comes directly from the SNES via emulator and rom while the other one is a freeware program that mimics the music composing feature from the game but adds more sound effects and note range. Apparently, only "true" music composers use the rom version since it somehow takes more skill to make music with limitations compared to the knockoff version that has more options.
- Do you play on anything that isn't part of the glorious PC Master Race? Well, you're wrong, and a terrible person for having fun that way.
Fighting Games
- A special mention must be given to those who play Super Smash Bros. As a Mascot Fighter, the gameplay revel in chaos and unpredictability; Items spawn all over the place, the very shape of the stage can change, and some areas of some stages can even hurt you. Naturally, some gamers, especially those who play in tournaments, want to lessen this to remove the luck factor, but, like everything, some take this way, way too far. For example, in Melee, rather than playing in the labyrinthine “Temple,” or the frequently shifting “Brinstar Depths” the type of gamer described here plays only in the static “Battlefield,” or the completely featureless “Final Destination,” with no items, to remove all the luck factors. The sheer number of options available (and passed over by this type of player) really polarizes the series' fandom. Not really a problem, to each his own right? Sadly, wrong. You can't go into any Smash discussion without flame wars about how the game is to be played properly with some people claiming that items and certain stages are for noobs and using them automatically proves that the player isn't as good as the tournament players. To them, anyone who doesn't play like them only care about some Flanderized notion of “playing-for-fun” and don't play the game like it's “supposed to/properly/more effectively played.”
- A quick explanation of the picture above: the stages in red are generally banned in tournaments. The stages in yellow are only available after the first match of a best 2/3 set or by player agreement. The stages in green, the ones you can count on your fingers, are set to random select for the first round. For the two that are two-tone, they're banned in team play since they lag too much with 4 players at once.
- Ahem. "NO ITEMS! FOX ONLY! FINAL DESTINATION!"
- The above is also lovingly drawn out in this LegendaryFrog comic.
- Just to show how thick the Stop Having Fun Guydom runs in the Smash Bros circles, look at the comments for that video. You'll find plenty of tourney players acting out everything described in the trope's introduction to the letter. Just a few gems:
"There's your problem; what you see as glitches are what we dub techniques."
"How often is it that we see a phenomenon such as this? Where we can take a game to literally new heights?"
"Tourney Tards perfected Melee."
- Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata, the men who essentially are the games, have both spoken against SHFG-style players.
- In Street Fighter, you'll have those who sneer at players who chose Ryu And Ken, because Akuma (who is banned in most tournaments) is "So much better."
- Street Fighter III has its own version of this guy. You know, the one who shows off his elite ability to parry anything and scoffs at anyone who comes at them with nothing less.
- Hell, you can probably get dissed on if Third Strike is not your favorite Street Fighter game and even one of your favorite fighters of all time.
- You can occasionally find players like this in arcades preying on new players, scoffing at and ridiculing their lack of skill while reveling in what is sure to be an easy victory, using overwhelming force with the intent of humiliating the other player. When playing people like that, it is very easy to be turned off from the game.
- Several years back, a tournament-level player by the name of David Sirlin wrote an article called "Playing To Win," the upshot of which is, if you're not playing a game at a cut-throat competitive level, you're not worthy to talk about it or venture an opinion on it. It has a few thought provoking points, but the arrogance of the piece kind of eats away at that.
- Guilty Gear fans will often scoff at you for not knowing basic blockstrings and combos, even though many of what they term "basic" require a fair amount of practice (ideally on a home system) to get down pat.
- You're a scrub if your team in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 consists of anything but Captain Commando, Psylocke, Cyclops, Cable, Magneto, Storm, or Sentinel. Now that the game has been released for Xbox Live, don't you dare complain about seeing the same five or six characters over and over.
- Well, kinda. If you play online in Player Matches, it's a much more casual atmosphere, and using non-God Tier characters is common. In Ranked Matches, though? OH GOD.
- If you look up gameplay videos of hentai characters in MUGEN on You Tube, you're a sad little man who's worthy of pity. You'll also see just how much MUGEN fans apparently hate sex, who make videos of said characters being "destroyed" by real MUGEN characters.
- And yes, there are pornographic fighting game characters for MUGEN. Not that they belong there, because MUGEN is Serious Business.
- However, it is worth noting that many such pornographic characters are really trashy pieces of crap, so the hate is somewhat justified.
Role Playing Games
- The freeware game Netbattle lets people create Pokemon teams with any movesets and optimized stats, then battle their customized teams online. If you use a moveset that isn't up to the Stop Having Fun Guys' standards, even if you're not playing against them, you will be told how much your team sucks just because you're doing it wrong. If you use a one-hit KO move like Sheer Cold, you will be shunned and scoffed at for relying on a pure luck/n00b tactic. Some people even end the match prematurely if you use said moves or the moves actually hit (they only work 30% of the time, hence the huge luck). Some players even go so far as to outright ban items like Quick Claw, because it upsets the “balance.” To be fair, however, many of the rules set on battles are to prevent people by winning by being an ass.
- Penny Arcade has the story of how Gabe took the mickey out of a larval-stage SHFG. Also a follow-up post showing why if you are a parent of a young child, you should never, ever let him or her attend an officially sanctioned tournament.
- The anime directors are flagrantly aware of this. That's why Ash has Paul to worry about in his Sinnoh journeys. He's quite the divisive individual, really; some, like the players in this group, actually idolize him while others are appalled at the way he treats his Pokemon.
- The main problem some people have with him is that in the anime, Pokemon are real creatures. While most people are comfortable treating pieces of data cruely, they draw the line at doing that to real animals.
- Most of these examples are averted with Smogon; while they do sometimes treat Pokemon like Serious Business, most people there could not care less if you break their rules, as long as they're not the ones you're battling. And disagreements rarely, if ever, dissolve into flame wars. You're more likely to find the crazies on a few other websites. This still doesn't stop people from accusing them of being elitist jerks, though.
- You're not allowed to run from a battle in a JRPG. Ever. It doesn't matter whether the enemy's kicking your ass hard and it's been hours since you used a save point, you're in a real-life hurry to get to a save point, or the enemy is so weak that there's no point in fighting it for what little spoils you'll gain. If you run from battle, you are a complete RPG Scrub who is on the same level as child molesters and people who talk in the theater.
- There is only one party setup worth using. Every other combination of characters is absolutely worthless. Unless you specify otherwise, everyone will always assume you're using that party.
- Very true in the Final Fantasy Tactics series. Using a Gadgeteer/Tinker? You're an idiot for using a "garbage" class. No matter how much you try to defend your decisions on what classes you use and how you use them, the "expert" players will just lecture you on how the other classes are so much better than what you use, despite the fact that Advance and A2 are pretty easy to beat with almost any class set up you use.
- This one actually splits in two separate ways: there's the aforementioned section of JRPG fandom who will reject using anything except the most awesomely broken options... but then at the other extreme there's a set of Scrubs who will sneer at anyone who's crappy enough to "need" all the best stuff to win, in effect declaring Self Imposed Challenges the only valid way to play. Apparently if you're not playing through the game as a level 1 solo Joke Character without equipment you suck and have no business playing it.
- A perfect example of what happens when you mix this with Fan Dumb is shown here. Beware the "Tyranny of Fun"!
- Do you want to have fun playing RPGs? James Raggi considers you inferior. "Inferior" is perhaps too nice a word; "the scum of the earth" is a more accurate way of putting it. He even put up an followup to the article insulting anybody who was linked to it from this wiki.
- Even FFTA2 itself uses the trope during one conversation between the main characters. One says that some people think that anyone who relies on a judge in battle (clans that swear by a judge and its rules cannot die in battle) are nothing but cowards and that real men fight with everything on the line.
- Try playing Fallout3 without using VATS much, or by actually playing as a good guy. Prepare to have people yelling your head off.
- When faced with a party of Munchkins, a game of Dungeons And Dragons can turn into this very quickly. Woe to you if you happen to have a character who is not min-maxed up the arse. Even if you want to make a character who fulfills a role that the party needs, you're still a worthless maggot because you aren't multiclassing/are multiclassing/aren't using a Co Dzilla.
- Unfortunately it can be seemingly justified in some editions where if characters are at different levels of min/maxing the game balance can be shattered. A character min/maxed by a pro and a character made by a person new to the game can have such a gap in power and survivability that anything that would be a challenge for the min/maxed character is likely to destroy the new person's character in one round. A certain amount of balance must be struck in this case where the DM either reigns in the min/maxed character or helps the new player min/max their character somewhat, or a combination thereof. What makes the Stop Having Fun Guy is he will be unwilling to either tone down his character or help the other player beef up his, instead deciding to berate and insist that his character is not the problem at all and expect everyone to play his way.
- Conversely the Stop Having Fun Guy can actually be the exact opposite, insisting that any sort of character optimization is the sign of a munchkin and thus expecting everyone to play underpowered or blatantly useless characters, or in lesser cases expectations of spending character build points on things that are only relevant for roleplaying purposes (expecting somebody with a background that says "grew up on a farm" Spending ranks on profession: farmer even though doing so gives the character a handicap since those points would be better spent elsewhere). Although the last portion isn't so bad if the player does it himself, Stop Having Fun Guy will push this on the other players, and often blame the DM if he doesn't enforce it. One could argue this is a form of Scrub instead, but that really depends on whether the player insists on general "any minmaxing is bad" (Stop Having Fun Guy) and "My rules make roleplaying better and are the only way to play" (Scrub.)
- Pit them against a Killer Game Master and Hilarity Ensues!
- That's the idea. You optimize your character so you can face challenges three or four levels above what you're supposed to be facing. The people who need to do this tend to be those facing Killer Game Master sorts of G Ms. Otherwise you die.
- Unless your Killer Game Master makes you actually do some role-play and not roll-play...by which they will exploit character flaws and shortcomings just about every way, such as making Wu J En's taboos being forcefully encountered.
Rhythm Games
- Honorable Mention goes to the various “real musicians” who tell players of games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band that they should stop playing video games and learn a real instrument. Most of the time, however, these people fail to realize that these games do not just emulate playing an instrument, but the entire rock star lifestyle, which would normally be extremely improbable to obtain in real life regardless of how well one can play a real guitar.
- The number of Modern Warfare fans signing up at the CIA to gun down people at airports? 0.
This xkcd strip is the Trope Namer.
- You're not allowed to play pop'n music with the Beat-Pop modifier. After all, if you want gray and blue notes so badly, why not just play beatmania IIDX?
- Dance Dance Revolution has a horde of these types who seem to think touching the safety bar during gameplay is a crime against humanity, and will proceed to preach a sermon on the evils of the safety bar to any player they see grabbing it. Yes, they're as annoying as it sounds.
MMORP Gs
- Ragnarok Online features a multitude of classes you can choose from, and because of the set-up for the stats and skills layout, you can have very unorthodox builds for any given class. Many classes are designed with certain builds in mind, but there is nothing stopping you from making a screwball build - Battle Wizard, Flee-Monk, Agility Crusader. God forbid you actually admit to working on one, especially to a guild that focuses heavily on Wo E combat.
- Actually, An agility crussader is an extremely nice build for reaching 99 really fast, and probably belong more to a stop having fun guys because Competitive Players don't use nothing but Rebirth classes designed for Wo E and Pv P.
- Second Life. Yes, there are people who take this seriously. When it comes to using weapons, there seems to be a rule among Second Life members that you are not allowed to use "n00b weapons" (guns gotten for cheap or free). Never mind the fact that the good things cost lindens (Second Life's currency) and to get more, you have to pay with real money, or spend lots of time doing jobs that would net you a petty amount (grinding), which some people can't do.
- City Of Heroes (and its counterpart game, City of Villains) have a couple archetype combinations and maps that get used extensively by the twink crowd. In City of Heroes, it's Fire/Kinetics Controllers that are viewed as the “most powerful”, with two maps that get used. Both are outdoors in an urban setting and have all the enemy groups in relatively straight lines, with the key difference between them being either Family or Demons as the enemy type. City of Villains is a bit more complex due to the lack of a completely self-sufficient, overpowering archetype combination, but the popular choice is to pair an (area of effect emphasis)/Stone Armor Brute and a (area of effect emphasis)/Kinetics Corruptor (popular combinations are Super Strength/Stone Armor and Fire Blast/Kinetics). The map of choice is “Battle For Television,” an outdoor urban map that mixes Family and Nemesis. They will then set up teams (usually capped to 6 out of the 8 possible to prevent Boss level spawns) and “farm” it, just clear the map without completing the objectives, reset the map, and repeat. While this is a very effective way to gain money, it is extremely monotonous and many of the people that set these up are also completely passionless and very strict about the conduct of the “team fillers,” with the most extreme of them not even letting them on the map to share the rewards (though even these ones usually tell you ahead of time, and let you leave once all the enemies on the map are spawned). Then there are the people that refuse to do anything but this type of team...
- This section of the playerbase also relentlessly pursues and abuses other exploits for risk-free experience.
- Note that these players aren't in the majority among CoH and CoV's playerbase. It's easy to find and fill teams that aren't playing this way.
- And now that we have the Invention system implemented, expect any player that doesn't use and abuse it to twink out his character to ridiculous levels to be mocked mercilessly by the usual suspects.
- The opposite is also true in many cases. More than one of the extreme roleplayers or casuals within City of Heroes or Villains has seen on the forums or in game to essentially demand the devs not only ban farming, but delete the farmer's characters, force them to play the way roleplayers and casuals play, and have an amazing mental ability to block out the very possibility that anyone could possibly have fun twinking out a character or running the Taskforces in anything less than 2 hours.
- But the devs pretty much indulge these people- commonly farmed maps are routinely nerfed, given timers, or otherwise removed. On the other hand, they've allowed players to set missions to contain as many enemies as they'd spawn for an 8 man team, allowing farmers to do their thing alone without bothering anyone else. This, the fact that most farming builds don't really work until high levels and the emphasis on lower-level and team play means that Stop Having Fun Guys are firmly in the minority in City of Heroes. The player motto is "If you're having fun, you're doing it right."
- On the other hand, there's Twixt, whose goal is to "maintain superiority of the Hero faction over the villain faction using Pv P combat." Through consistent use of tactics considered to be Game Breakers, and through killing villains even in areas set aside for farming, he has succeeded in alienating a lot of people. He says he's doing this for sociological research (despite multiple scientists publicly tearing what little he's published to shreds for flat-out bad science), whereas the blogger discussing him in the link takes on a more obvious Stop Having Fun Guys tone and describes the farmers as "colluding with the enemy."
- If you aren't willing to put up with the restrictions and are willing to invest a lot of time into it, forget about two things in World Of Warcraft: Raids and Arena. There is a very vocal group of players who believe you don't deserve any sort of advancement if you don't participate in either of these aspects. Never mind the fact that, as mentioned, raids don't necessarily require skill, and that neither are particularly fun at their upper tiers primarily due to the high volume of these people at that level.
- When 10-man raids were first announced, there was a huge uproar from the hardcore raider crowd. Some arguments against the change were reasonable, but many other arguments basically boiled down to: "You're not allowed access to this type of content because we say so."
- With the advent of the Armory, allowing anyone to see your character's full Gear/Talent spec and achievements this has reached insane levels. Typically the second post on a forum thread will be someone invalidating the OPs opinion because of their armory stats. It's particularly bad in Pv P where any opinion will have someone insult your arena ratings.
- HOW on EARTH have you guys NOT managed to mention the infamous 50 DKP Minus person?
- This is the kind of player that can make World Of Warcraft very unpleasant. Alas, they abound, especially on open world PvP servers.
- The server Tichondrius is widely known to be the worst in World Of Warcraft, as it is filled to the gills with elitist PvPer jerks who will actually SCAN YOUR ARMORY PROFILE to make sure you are a seasoned PvPer. If you aren't? You're blacklisted by all players. Fun does not exist here and so (as the servers motto goes) "Tichondrius is Not For You".
- This can be subverted to a certain extent by players with access to a fun loving community and some free time. Notable World Of Warcraft examples include hundreds of Lvl1 zombies invading Iron Forge and causing Havoc. Eve has frigate rushes, And Ultima Online at various times experience hordes of Angry Farmers, Angry Scotsmen, and a Star Trek Away Team, which lost many redshirts and failed to establish communication with the P Ks.
- Blizzard itself loves to hold events for these kind of people with their holiday and expansion events, with nice freebie epics for the casuals to boot. Of course, this does not fly well with the elite either complaining about how the event is distruptive to their grinding/crafting/trading/WTF-Evering... And/Or complaining about how the "scrubs" are being catered to "as usual".
- The official World of Warcraft class forums are chock full of posters that epitomize this trope. Don't have a +16 Intellect gem in every gem slot of your gear? Then you are the worst Holy Paladin in the world and deserve to be boiled in acid. Have a talent point spent somewhere other than in the cookie-cutter build? Delete your character immediately and never play World Of Warcraft again, you complete and utter loser. It's amazing that anyone has ever managed to learn the ins-and-outs of gameplay in the first place, considering that everyone should have committed seppuku within 30 seconds of creating their first character.
- Also, there are massive complaints on the forums by the very vocal minority of "Hardcore" Raiders stating how Blizzard is ruining the game by allowing Casual Gamers to acquire endgame gear with the new Random Dungeon Finder tool (which allows players to get into Pick Up Groups that have a fair chance of not sucking, and hands out endgame loot tokens for successful runs). Has everyone forgotten that World Of Warcraft has always been a casual-player-targeted MMO? The l33t Engame Raiders that keep whining about Blizzard ruining the game by catering to "scrubs" should be glad that THEY have been given something to do.
- Also, there are massive complaints on the forums by the very vocal minority of "so-called" casuals stating how Blizzard is ruining the game by not allowing them to constantly get free gear and that some of the most basic bosses in the game are just too hard for them. These casuals give the others a bad name and are asking to get a free ride to where they would be left with nothing to do as well...
- Instant-Message Roleplay has its own breed of the Stop Having Fun Guy. It's the type that demands a great number of Instant Message boxes be filled per post, and will throw a fit if you do anything under the limit. Most people would be hard-pressed to stretch a single action into three. How they manage to find people to play with is anyone's guess.
- AOL. AOL by far has some of the worst "Stop having fun guys" RPers. The standard fare to RP with anyone is: you must have a well thought out profile (this apparently is the most important thing. Also if it's not schwag and it doesn't have a picture, it's not "well thought out"), can type two full IM boxes consistently, and should have a storyline to play along with (although some offer their own). And then there's the whole vocabulary thing (calling eyes "orbs" and ears "radars" of all things).
- There was also a group that booted you out of the room if you didn't RP fast enough, claiming they do a mostly "talking" RP.
- Oh man, AOL Free-form RP (FFRP). With the 'ability' to "roll" various amounts of "dice" with various amounts of "sides" (i.e., a random number generator), there was infinite potential to not have fun. Combat tended to be speed-typing-based and not round-by-round (i.e., D&D style), which meant that 'fights' turned into copy-pasting "punches him" follwed by the roll command over and over again. Which was de-funned even further by stipulations on minimum-word limits, time limits between actions, and refusals to recognize actions for one reason or another ("You can't just say 'fires a gun at him'! What kind of gun? What kind of bullets? What are you aiming at?") All this cat-herding was ruled over by a series of unofficial "official" enforcers of rules (a.k.a. clans or guilds), none of which required anything more than a hastily-assembled webpage of rules. And don't you dare laugh at any of this. It was Serious Business.
- In Yahoo! Chat, back when it actually had user rooms, if you couldn't do three eight line paragraphs about the simple act of throwing a punch, then you just couldn't RP, noob!
- The reverse has been known to be true as well; some players advocate a maximum number of lines (usually three or five) per post for a variety of reasons that boil down to "you're a noob if you can't say what you need to say in three lines" or "you're a poser who pads his posts with purple prose." It can become a Cyclic Trope when the para-posters become dominant in a particular chat, leave a couple of disgruntled veterans who aren't on the paragraph side, and the latter become role models for a lot of newbies who don't like the para-post clans, form their own clans until they become dominant in numbers and the para-posting clans disintegrate, leaving behind a few old guard who start wowing the newbies with their "mad posting skillz..."
- Forum Play-by-posts. Seriously many people require you to have an extreme amounts of actions taken. Of course this may also happen when you are playing numerous characters or Non-player characters at once, which would result in a longer post; but if you have only ONE character, then you MUST match theirs in length and description! Even when you are NOT in control of the environment and therefore have nothing else to describe but your character's actions.
- It may also go both ways - Sometimes people will demand that you simply don't overload them with details or introduce them overtime and will enable you to get away with a shorter post, and if you do too much stuff then you're overwhelming other players or are just trying to show off.
- Both may actually be justified to some extent - Yes it may not be useful to others when you simply take one action and describe it in a few words. ("I hit my head and swear") But if you perform insane amounts of actions and put so much detail into describing things, then it can be a little hard for others to keep up with you, especially if one is controlling a lot of characters and most actions taken or description given in the posts that don't apply to most other characters. Bottom line? Just try and balance "Get right to the point" and "Enriching the world", don't add details for the sake of longer posts and don't just say you nod and that's all.
- The general principle is that a post should be like a skirt - long enough to cover the essentials, but short enough to still be interesting.
- MUS Hes and MUC Ks often suffer from the above phenomena too. Some will encourage (or require) you to write "long, descriptive" poses or character descs (what others see when they @look at your character), where it turns out that "long and descriptive" actually means "a giant rambling paragraph of Purple Prose." Short, simple, to-the-point descriptions of anyone and anything are eschewed— even describing something as mundane as a character getting a drink of water can become serious business, when the community "standard" for poses requires elaborate descriptions of the character's every motion, interspersed with reflections about their current emotional state and its deep significance. The fact that waiting five minutes for everyone to finish posing when you just want to get on with a plot, or having to scroll through screen-long descriptive paragraphs about every area you're in whilst navigating around the MU*, can just be aggravating, is apparently a lesser consideration. And then there are the competitive posers who try to constantly one-up each other in length and Purple Prose...
- Efedding. It's a forum based writing/roleplaying game with Professional Wrestling as a backdrop. Efedding players can generally be broken down into "storyline" (writing short stories and chapters thereof featuring your character(s)) and "trashtalk" (doing like real pro wrestlers do and talk trash about your opponent and the match). Stop Having Fun Guys exist on both ends of the spectrum. Trashtalkers consider storyliners to be pretentious psuedo-intellectuals who don't know how to play the game. Storyliners consider trashtalkers to be uncreative dullards who don't know how to play the game.
- The MMORPG Regnum Online (a realm vs realm based game) has an English server, "Horus," that is rather unpopulated compared to their international server, meaning that there is quite literally under 10 people left to defend a realm during downtime. This leads to a large issue:
- One realm (Ignis) has "won" the game multiple times by staying up until every other realm is asleep, and then doing a massive Zerg Rush, with 30+ players (most higher levels) blowing through the ~10-15 mid-high leveled people left in both the other realms combined.
- Then, once there are enough players online to properly fight back, they will spend all day just sitting in their bases so that nobody else can take them. Those involved with both commonly declare this as "tactics," leading to the in-game Memetic Mutation "Quitting your job and dropping out of school are NOT tactics!"
- In Phantasy Star Universe, there is a large group of people who will boot you from the party for a number of reasons. Picking up "trash" rare items (Even when there is some value to them)? Not having the right Weapon/Armor element (especially at a low percent)? Having weapons that are not grinded (enough)? Having low Photon Art levels? Daring to not play as the "right" race/class combo, especially as a disadvantaged one (Beast Gunner, Newman Fighter, CAST Techer)? Getting most of the good rares when the setting's on Set Random? Oh Noes! Hell, just being there at the end boxes on missions is a viable reason to be kicked from the party. You don't have to do much to get booted from the party. Sometimes even nothing at all...
- It sucks more when you MUST play as an inferior in class in order to unlock one of the "right" classes. For example, in order to unlock Master Force, you need to play as a Wartecher and a Fortetecher first which can both be considered as inferior classes.
- In EVE Online there's a constant struggle going on between "carebears" who do non-Pv P related activities such as mining or mission running and the PvPers and pirates. Sure, there's the saying that "Pv P in EVE is consensual and you consent whenever you undock", but PvPers seem to be of the mind that the game is ALL Pv P and you should not have the freedom to play the game the way you like- if you prefer to fly out into an asteroid belt and shoot rocks with a mining laser, you deserve to die and be taunted for it. This despite the fact that freedom of gameplay is EVE's biggest drawcard and that half the ingame economy is powered by carebears. They're a little more forgiving if you're a new player, and don't have the skills or equipment to survive in 0.0, but veteran players have no excuse.
- Despite what one may see on the forums, there simply isn't some great big epic division in the playerbase. Sure, there's a very, very Vocal Minority, but most people in both camps either don't care about or don't mind the other. Also, Market Pv P.
- Maplestory. If you don't have godly gear, or if your damage isn't up to par with the (increasignly more) absurd standards set by the "pros" (read: people who spend entire days just merchanting for Meso, the game's currency), or if you're playing one of the least popular classes, or, god forbid, if you play the game for fun rather than for leveling up. (Such as, say, NOT hiring a high level cleric to train you, a costly but fast process that lets you skip ahead in levels quickly), you're a noob.
- Believe it or not, but a majority of people who play Toontown Online actually take the game seriously! Especially in the boss battles.
Newspaper Comics
- Brilliantly skewered in a Calvin And Hobbes strip where Calvin is criticizing a clay tiger made by Hobbes.
Hobbes: Who cares, I wanted to make it.
Calvin: What is this, some sort of snobby aesthetic thing?!
- Also shown in Baby Blues. Zoe wants to have some fun cup-stacking while Darryl offers to be her coach. When she refuses, saying she just wants to have fun with cup-stacking, Darryl asks, "What kind of mentality is that?!"
First Person Shooters
Third Person Shooters
- Expect to be called a noob for doing... just about anything outside of using the advanced sword cancel techniques with shotguns in the online game GunZ the Duel. Even using the most accurate rifle in the game, you'll be doing nothing but spraying wildly... even after you nail an opponent 14 times in the chest. Using a dagger to knock someone down and shooting them while they're on the ground because they didn't jump out of it? You're being a dagger noob.
- And if you jump out of a dagger user's lunge almost every time, you'll often be called a hacker.
- Rifle, Revs, Kodaichi, and E-style (short for European-style and is the "simpler" advanced technique system i.e., anything that doesn't require a glitch in the system to be usable, which is what the sword cancel techniques ARE) is guaranteed to piss off the ones that use the sword cancel techniques (called K-Style, or Korean Style.)
- S4 League players that use the Cannonade, Counter Sword, or Semi Rifle are often called noobs, since these are more versatile, safer or easier to aim but less daging versions of the Rail Gun, Plasma Sword, or Gauss Rifle. They're also powerful tools in their own way — the Counter Sword is usually shunned by Scrubs as being overpowered. The Counter Sword and Rail Gun tend to also be considered unacceptable weapons on the Tunnel v1 map, where they are fun but not a good way to score touchdowns.
- And then there are the 'rawr guns r 4 noobs' players, that insult and abuse anyone who uses anything but melee weaponry ( 2 out of some 20 or so weapons ), the 'LAGGER!' haters, who abuse anyone who tries to play with a poor connection because the game attempts (albeit a bit clumsily) to protect any poor sod whose connection can't give them a perfect uplink. For people defying the games basic premise, these guys (perhaps due to their stupidity) can be unbelievably vicious.
- The online Multiplayer mode for SOCOM 3/Combined Assault seems to consist almost entirely of suppression matches on a timer played on Devil's Road, Which is made up of two villages on either side of a lake. The result? Constant sniping, to the point where some servers have every other weapon disabled, and where this isn't the case you will be flamed for using other guns.
- Gears Of War has an apocalyptically Broken Base filled with enough anger, hatred and bile to power the country. Expect to be called "cheap" or "noob" by someone for getting a kill with anything. Generally, most people will tell you to use the shotgun, and only the shotgun, but if you get a kill with that they'll accuse you of being the host and yell at you even more, and that's just in the first game. The sequel has a whole new set of problems, the first being the group of people who will call you a noob for playing it at all because they nerfed the shotgun. The sequel also added a bunch of new weapons to be called cheap. It also redesigned the Hammerburst into a semi-automatic battle rifle, which is the SHFG's new favorite gun.
- It's worth noting that the two weapons that the SHFGs claim to require skill are perhaps the most overpowered in the series.
- Also, standing still for more than a split second or shooting from any distance but gun-up-the-ass-point-blank is camping, and cover is only for wallbouncing. Actually using it to protect yourself is a total noob tactic. For God's sake, just last week someone on the forums got chewed out for aiming his gun instead of shooting from the hip.
Other
- Sparda have mercy on your soul if you admit to playing Easy Automatic on any Devil May Cry title, for the Dante Must Die-demolishing "pros" will have none. Although there actually is a bit of sense in this, since part of the fun is linking together Dante, Vergil or Nero's moves as one sees fit, and the automated combo choices Easy Auto forces on the player detracts from that.
- Defense Of The Ancients, that (in)famous Warcraft III map, has a number of players who despise "noob" and "pub" (public game) hero and item choices.
- Anyone who plays Phantom Assassin, Stealth Assassin or Phantom Lancer at any time will be trashed for the entire game by the SHFG player. Also, anyone who ever buys a Dagon will incur the same level of wrath.
- If you're not coming within seconds of a world record in Initial D Arcade Stage or Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, fellow players will think you're So Bad You're Horrible.
- Chrome Hounds presents an interesting case— the Scrubs and the Stop Having Fun Guys are both in general control of the online community- and advocating similar messages: Stick Mechs are king, and Base-Dropping means you're a n00b, unless you did so in a Wheelie (God help you if you play like the game advocates instead).
- The Mario Kart series have been getting this, starting with the DS. Mention the word, snaking, anywhere, and you are bound to stir up a flame war between people who are for it and and people who are against it. If you try to explain how snaking is broken, you are classified as a Scrub who can't handle better players or just suck at snaking.
- Mario Kart Wii is no better when it comes to using bikes and certain characters with stat bonuses. If you dare to use anyone other than Daisy and Funky Kong (since they have the best bonus for top speed), any bike other than the Dolphin Dasher, Mach Bike, Flame Runner, or even try to play by just using a kart, pro players will tell you that you will always lose and stand no chance against people using a bike. You're also a Scrub by default if you even go as far as denouncing bikes for being overpowered. Apparently, no one is allowed to use anything other than the top tiered characters and bikes because it's all about using only the best to win.
- Admit to playing any game with Difficulty Levels on Easy (or even just ask a question about how it compares to the other levels) and prepare to get swarmed by people insisting that real gamers don't play on any level lower than
Normal Hard Harder Than Hard the absolute hardest difficulty.
- This also applies to custom levels or custom games like rom hacks. If they are too hard and people complain about it, the people that love it will denounce the complainers as scrubs and n00bs who can't handle a challenge.
- Conversely, admit to playing on the hardest difficulty level and being good at it and people will tell you you're not having fun.
- Interestingly, Spiderweb Software switched to using Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels in the later Geneforge games as a response to something similar to this. The fanbase itself has relatively little friction between those who play on Normal or Tough in the older games and those who prefer Torment, but Word Of God says that there's often an impression that playing on Easy is somehow wrong, and they didn't want people to feel that they were stuck playing on Normal or harder if they had trouble with the games. Makes a certain amount of sense—after all, if they didn't want people using Easy, they wouldn't have included it.
- Mount & Blade offers players the chance to play either on foot as infantry, or use a horse. In an unusual bidirectional relationship, horse players and infantry players both generally hate eachother and view the other side's tactics as noobish. Cavalry players typically hate infantry because they are too slow and don't rack up enough kills, while infantry players typically hate cavalry for being a one trick pony (pun totally intended) and without any real skill.
- The only acceptable methods of input for Touhou are arcade sticks and keyboards. Even if you can't afford a stick, you are not allowed to play using a controller, even if it's a reputable controller like the ones for the Sega Saturn and the SNES.
- Games from the SNES era and earlier are the only games you should ever be playing. Everything else is far too casual.
- On the topic of emulators, there are gamers who believe using savestates makes you a cheater.
- Admit to struggling with Thunder Force III or IV, and fellow shmup players will brag about how impossibly easy they are and how it only takes 1 or 2 attempts to 1-credit the whole game.
- Well IV is actually somewhat challenging compared to some of the other games in the series, but III yeah.
- Sim City 4 Deluxe not only has SHFGs on the game's basic level (which can range from being barred of using light density zones or to not using rails because railways take up real-estate), but it also has the entire modding community chock-full of them.
- One mention can go to building making. While the crowd complains about how uninteresting the standard Maxis Buildings are, they complain if anyone makes a building that looks different. Yes, because while you must create something unique, you must also follow the game's art style. And be damned if you don't use a real-life building as your subject, since many fantasy and original creations are all but ignored by the elites. Also, you must only use desaturated colors and be sure to add as much detail and gradients as possible, because it's not about you customizing the game, it's about the community customizing the game.
- Another area involves modifications of the game simulator and network (roads, rails, subways), which has led to many things like the NAM (Network Addon Mod, which adds a large amount of even more transportation options and some bug fixes) and the CAM (Colossal Addon Mod, which alters the game's standard growth stages to be even larger, making some buildings/lots pretty much pointless unless they're skyscrapers). There's large teams devoted to updating and making such things that it seems like everyone spends more time modifying the game than actually playing it. No matter, not using any of these mods grants you to be a noob on all levels.
- Not directly related to this trope, but this picture takes it to a literal level.
- If you use any mod which changes gameplay other than the official DLC in Morrowind or Oblivion or Fallout 3. Real Players sometimes even forego Better Bodies because this implies Bethesda may have *gasp* not paid as intricate attention to detail on character models than the background world and story immersion. (When in actuality, Bethesda has since realised they don't have to work that hard due to the immense modding community support and lets them fix all their boners. So how many Berserk Button s did I just push with that line?)
Sports
- Sports in general are not only treated as Very Serious Business but also are a breeding ground for these. Too many examples to count, we'll just leave it at that, but we'll also say that it may sometimes be justified in the professional level.
- Children's Soccer. Have you ever seen Soccer Moms in action? It's just a game, the kids are supposed to be having fun.
- Have you ever seen Hockey Dads? Some of them have beaten each other to death.
- In the Netherlands we have Soccer Dads acting exactly the same.
- Hunting and Fishing have often been known to attract these types. But of course there are quite a bit of people who're willing to give you some slack. Not everyone is really going to be performing at their peak when it's five in the morning, or lucky enough to catch a really big one. But there are people who can be yelling at you for catching too much fish or getting a kill bigger than they got. Oh you got a bigger trophy than I did? Beginner's luck...I got a bigger one? What finesse! What skill!
- Of particular note for mass hilarity is ice fishing, though some tournaments do state upfront they ban all but certain specific ways of fishing. Go ahead and use a spear or large handheld net normally though. Just do it. Lets ignore the fact the Inuit have done it this way for centuries, civilized people only use rod&tackle, same as in normal fishing. And god help you if you're sitting on anything other than your bait box. A lawn chair? You scummy suburbanite trendwhore! How dare you also dress comfortably!
- Figure skating. Not the coaches. The fans. Go ahead and cheer for whomever is NOT the media darling at the time. Cheer harder once they trounce said media darling. Hilarity Ensues
Strategy
- Go to any Warhammer 40000 fan forum, and ask about army lists. Note that many of the aggressive posts are the guys who are building their armies to play Tournament matches against Space Marine armies (loaded with six-man Las/Plas squads and as many Assault Cannons, a huge Gamebreaker in previous editions, as possible) on tables with no terrain.
- If you post a list containing the most powerful units you can choose (such as the aforementioned las/plas squads), you will provoke an equally acerbic response. Such armies are criticised for not fitting in with the critic's idea of the background material (which will differ from critic to critic) - and, especially, for being Gamebreakers and not the 'right way to play'.
- War Hammer and War Hammer 40000 are prime wargame examples. Use certain units or make a themed army, even if they're fluffy and fun, and the hardcore grognards will generally lecture on efficiency and effectiveness then probably advise the same cookie-cutter army that other people use to win. Make a wacky paint scheme and get decried by traditionalists. Make an army with a background that doesn't strictly follow established canon (like a loyal Space Marine army that is descended from one of the Traitor Legions) and prepare to be lambasted by canon-is-God players. Unless you say you're going back 10,000 years. With the Horus Heresy such a squiggly knot in history with Chaos playing some kind of supremely-advanced Risk, practically anything will go.
- On that last note, tone and background are important factors. Gag armies are typically well-received by good-humoured players (Joycrons◊ being a prominent example), and even in-character for some races (Orks being Orks are known to do all kinds of crazy stuff). That said, however, many gags or attempted combinations (Chaos Tau, for instance) are Berserk Buttons in certain parts of the fandom, and will throw even otherwise normal gamers into SHFG-worthy rages. Ultimately, it comes down to presentation, sensibility, and the type of people you play with.
- Three words: Female Space Marines.
- Heroes Of Might And Magic. If you didn't use the Armageddon + magic immune Black Dragons combo you're just completely devoid of common sense.
- Worse yet: In Heroes of Might and Magic V there are people who actually comes with arguments of how the Dungeon faction, specialist in destruction magic, is now completely ruined and obviously inferior to any other faction using destruction magic because other Heroes don't have a natural skill that pierces magic resistance, and thus, the Black Dragon's magic immunity, regardless of the fact that Warlocks, the Dungeon heroes, does from 50% to 200% more damage with destruction and receives way more Spell Power than any other faction hero save necromancers, and these are better off debuffing enemy armies and raising back theirs than wasting their mana in damaging spells. Trying using a destruction spell that isn't Armageddon didn't cross anyone's mind apparently.
- Not to mention that this Necromancer strategy is the only valid strategy for necromancers. God forbid you don't use Raise Dead, and not getting this spell in the Magic Guild is obviously no excuse.
- In Supreme Commander , if you don't use your Commander as a heavy tank destroying heavy platform in the early game, you're obviously trying to lose. Also building anything else than light tanks and engineers in the early game. Or using any other strategy than the siege bot spamming in the late game.
- And let's not begin with Command And Conquer itself. Didn't maximize the ore income in the beginning of the game with 3+ refineries? You lose. Didn't immediately begin to spam your basic tank? You lose. You actually bothered with human soldiers? You're so noob it hurts the pro's mother.
- Starcraft is an unique RTS in the sense that it requires the same twitch reflexes usually associated with FP Sers and Fighting Gamers. Your commands per second is less than 3? What are you doing wasting the professional's time and ruining their fun? You're not even worth thinking about. Didn't know that to defeat a 6 zergling zerg you only need a Zealot and a shield recharger... plus inhumanly reflexes capable of attacking the zerglings, landing exactly 2 hits and retreating before they can gank your zealot, ganking the zerglings with your probes as the zealot retreat, while recharging the zealot's shield? Even south koreans babies are born knowing that. You don't deserve to exist if you didn't know that.
- Five rules for being a welcome member in the Advance Wars communities: never mention Snipers, never play in Fog Of War, never play with navy, never say you can beat a competent player's infantry spam without CO abuse, and if you don't want to be marked as a Scrub, never ever (in Days of Ruin) choose No CO just because you only have to pay a minor price for the ridiculous boosts you get for COing a unit and surrounding units, or even complain about said ridiculous boosts. In short, do not complain about the blatant Fake Balance.
- Though mentioning Snipers isn't a rule in game, it's just for the sake of your, and the forum's, sanity.
Web Original
- Played For Laughs in this video. "THIS IS A SERIOUS GAME." Cue The Scrub being named Boba Fett, steal the last kill, butt-fuck one of the characters which sets off a chain reaction, resulting in that character killing the other Stop Having Fun Guy's character.
Card Games
- Yu-Gi-Oh. If any game can be considered personification of this trope, this would be it. It seems like the majority of duelists who play the game are like this, netdecking like crazy, dismissing cards that aren't Too Awesome To Use as utter crap, and completely willing to rape the 10% of players who only play the game for fun. Flame wars have been started over duelists asking how to make a good Elemental Hero deck (considered So Bad Its Horrible among the elite), with both sides being chewed out as talentless, brainless hacks. Also the Seven Staples (A series of trap/spell(or magic for the purist)/effect monsters) once made even the most fearsome high attack monsters like the blue eyes white dragon useless as they would be decimated the moment they are summoned by a simple pit.
- The seriousness of the fanbase is lampshaded in Yu-Gi-Oh GX, where the main character, Judai, will regularly remind opponents that dueling is supposed to be fun. These people will always act shocked and amazed, believing Judai to be foolish and childish. Naturally, Judai also plays the infamous Elemental Hero deck.
- Hell, it's gotten so bad that even Konami has gotten into the gig; ever since the Envoy Incident, they have become more and more paranoid, either Nerfing just about any card that could've been decently powerful, flooding new sets with inflexible self-contained Theme Deck materials, and/or banning and limiting cards in original but non combat-oriented decks that prove effective or popular, essentially controlling exactly what their fans will play at any given time to what they want them to play.
- Magic The Gathering designers call the players with the “only winning matters” mentality Spikes, in contrast to Timmies (who treat the game as a social outlet and like exciting play with big, impressive effects) and Johnnies (who treat the game as an intellectual exercise and creative medium and like unusual effects that complement each other). The design team generally tries to make sure there's something for each of these three player profiles in every expansion. Note that not all Spikes fall into this trope; see Player Archetypes for details.
- There is, though, a common belief among tourney players that if any card that costs four or more mana doesn't win the game for you on the spot, it should never even be put in your deck, which the more experienced tourney jocks know ain't so and casual players find laughable. The specific quote comes from Zvi Mowshowitz, long time professional magic player; but even he finds the idea laughable nowadays as seen in this article.
- Try playing most card games for fun. Some like Texas Hold 'em and Poker get this treatment moreso than others. People also insult you for not playing the game correctly.
- Which is ironic, considering that the people being insulted are effectively handing out free money to the people who hate them.
- Try playing Blackjack at a casino without having memorized a strategy card, but this reaction is somewhat justified since your mistakes can screw things up for the other players.
- However, it works both ways: sometimes your bad play will help the player ahead of you or bust the dealer.
- Sometimes, you can even get insulted by inexperienced players when you play correctly but counter-intuitively.
- Insulting opposing poker players for perceived mistakes can be a huge part of the Meta Game.
Live Action TV
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